A Coronavirus Epidemic , Struck 20,000 Years Ago, DNA Evidence Shows.
'Daily Mail' reports that a new study found
evidence that a coronavirus outbreak struck
East Asia approximately 20,000 years ago. .
A team of researchers led by the University
of Queensland looked at the specific genes that
code for proteins that interact with coronaviruses.
Among people of East Asian ancestry, researchers found evidence of natural selection for adaptations that would have served to lessen disease severity.
Kirill Alexandrov of the Queensland University of Technology, one of the paper's authors, said that the information in the human genome goes back tens of thousands of years. .
In the course of the epidemic,
selection favored variants of
pathogenesis-related human genes
with adaptive changes presumably
leading to a less severe disease, Kirill Alexandrov, synthetic biologist, Queensland University of Technology, via 'Daily Mail'.
By developing greater insights
into the ancient viral foes, we gain
understanding of how genomes
of different human populations
adapted to the viruses that have
been recently recognized as
a significant driver of human evolution, Kirill Alexandrov, synthetic biologist, Queensland University of Technology, via 'Daily Mail'.
The full findings of the study can be
found in the journal 'Current Biology.'